Home ›› 10 Feb 2022 ›› Opinion
The last twenty months have clearly shown that technology aided remote schooling is neither fully possible nor completely desirable. Digital education is surely a valuable add-on, but education must primarily be face-to-face, encouraging collective peer learning, sense of bonding and discipline, ensuring the mentors’ support and practical aspects being done productively. Higher education has a better use of digital learning, but in tandem with the physical, not exclusively. Learning is a socio-human behavior and engagement with peers is compulsory, aided by the mentors, in a physical space, further amplified digitally. Also, education includes social and emotional development along with learning various interlinked concepts across subjects, which are difficult remotely.
Moving to a blended or PhyGital education hence, the role of the teacher of the past is changing, and more so post-pandemic.
The teacher was a sage on the stage, introducing every new topic, speaking the last word on it, sticking to a structured syllabus as prescribed, interpreting it as s/he deems right, finishing the syllabus and focusing on examination and evaluation to complete the cycle of delivery of education. S/he often demands respect, and relies on the power to punish to. Teacher teaches and often sermonizes.
Each premise noted above is changing now.
Mentor today is a co-learner, may be the first stimulus for a topic but never the last word, starts from a structured syllabus but is expected to move towards organic learning depending upon the variegated interest areas of groups of learners. The Mentor aggregates learning resources from multiple sources and shares with the learners, and is more a guide. Examination also is changing to a more learner-friendly model of evaluation, which is just one more function and not the ultimate yardstick to judge the brilliance of the learner. Mentor engages and inspires.
With mentors replacing teachers, the students cannot be the pre-Covid-19 typical students any more going ahead.
In the usual approach, students study in classroom, are taught by teachers, limited to given syllabus, and study for marks, grades, degrees. Students give exams in written and on the basis of suggestions or set patters of evaluation.
But learners need to study within and beyond the classroom. They learn from mentors, peers, personal experience, books, digitally aggregated content, through projects and through assignments. Learners learn for lifetime application. Self-learning or learning to learn is hence a major cultivated skill for the present-day learners, especially in higher education, as techniques and technologies are changing in the work-place. Learners also learn organically. While structured syllabus must be completed for foundation and assessment, organic learning is about self-driven learning in few chosen areas out of interest, assisted by the mentors.
New normal education must not focus on customary practices and traditional habits or routine, but purely on pre-determined learning objectives, learning outcomes, along with linkages with social utility and economic productivity. This would call for majoring in a domain, but also minoring in some other related or unrelated domain so that there is a bigger scope ahead. It also calls for project-based learning where a concept is learnt along with its skills and alongside applied in a live real-life project so that the learning is internalized. Financial literacy, legal literacy, media literacy, emotional intelligence, teamwork and leadership, creative thinking, problem solving and innovative attitude are basics of any domain of higher learning today. These elevate the outcome of the hard skills unique to the domain. Unfortunately, larger masses and most of the institutes are not much focused on the same.
A massive train the trainer and capacity building are needed today to nurture the new age mentors. For this, first the mentor has to be a digital personality with smartphone and net connection, and with laptop and internet connection.
Next, one has to learn how to create, deliver and engage in content across multiple online platforms. To productively guide the learners, the mentors must also know how to take matter learnt online to skills practiced offline face to face. Third, one has to now learn to assess with open book through analysis and application, through quiz, through applied projects, through phygital presentation and physical work in labs and studios after using virtual labs and studios.
There are three types of learning resources that mentors have to put together and use: (a) proprietary content (the mentor’s own videos, audio or podcast content, power-points, cases, info-graphics etc), (b) aggregated content (available books, monographs, videos, podcasts, URLs, pdfs, cases, etc taken from the internet, YouTube and Vimeo, etc), and also (c) massive open/closed online learning resources (free ones like Swayam or NAPTEL, paid ones like those of Coursera or LinkedIn, and the university’s own online courses).
The mentor is expected to make a mix of proprietary, aggregated and online learning resources, suitably arranging them from the easiest one to the toughest one and offer to the learners digitally (using Google Class, emails, or through a Learning Management Systems like Canvas or TCSion, Blackboard or Collaborate, etc) at least a week or more before they meet the learners digitally or physically to discuss the content. This is called Flipped Classroom where the learners get learning content much in advance, read, watch or listen to the same asynchronously at their own time, place or pace, note down questions & clarifications. Only then they should come to the digital/physical classroom synchronously, to clarify doubts, discuss cases, debate on conclusions drawn and participate in quiz or analytical or applied assignments.
Further, education will now move from a system imposed disciplined endeavour to voluntarily participated and internalized process. It will be truly a learner-centric education now in the new normal, and shall be far more participative than the past. While voluntary learning will throw many non-interested or apathetic learners out of the learning circle, it will also make many focused learners internalize education better and apply it in a more focused manner at his or her individual level.
Also, with Artificial Intelligence, robotics, automation, Machine Learning and internet of things being the other emerging realities, the skills for mass production or education to do the same work repeatedly, will be totally irrelevant ahead when machines will take over almost all such work. Hence, new age skills, apart from technology use, have to be in areas like creativity, innovation, incubation, problem-solving, teamwork, leadership, critical thinking, design thinking, empathy, emotional intelligence and risk management.
To deliver such a learning, the learners’ engagement techniques have to be more tech-savvy in the digital class (google forms, polls, surveys, quiz, virtual lab and studio, AI tools, etc) and also with higher emotional quotient (use of humour, videos, info-graphics, empathy in the physical class, allowing diversity of opinion, and being wellness conscious).
Assessment refers to learner performance; it helps us decide if students are learning and where improvement is needed. Evaluation refers to a systematic process of determining the worth of the programme.
Assessment and evaluation can be both formative (carried out during the course) and summative (carried out after ending the course). Mentors can make learners aware of expectations in advance (e.g. one week for feedback from deadline) and keep them posted.
When online, evaluation can be on the basis of proctored digital examination or open-book analytical and applied evaluation with non-google-able questions. Online quiz and telephonic interview have also been the usual ways of digital assessment.
There will be offline evaluation also. Here, the assessment can be based on offline written examinations, field-survey based presentation or report writing, debates, lab or studio-based practical, or a peer-group work, or a submission of a long-term real life or live project.
But to get this new age scenario in place, we need to bridge the glaring digital divide in our South Asian nations through government policy, investments in education, CSR to connect the hinterland by corporate entities and civil society movement to support the unconnected.
The writer is an adviser and professor with Dhaka based Daffodil International University. He can be contacted at ujjwalk.chowdhury@gmail.com
